Monday, July 06, 2015

Iran Lobby Targets Legislators Who Oppose Nuclear Deal

By David Gerstman

Adam Kredo of the Free Beacon obtained an e-mail threatening Democratic legislators who have doubts about the nuclear deal with Iran that the administration is negotiating.

“Democrats in Congress are the only remaining obstacle to
finalizing today’s historic deal,” Zack Malitz, campaign manager for
CREDO, said in a statement emailed to reporters on July 2, along with a
note that details of the email were not to be published until a deal was
actually announced. “Every Democrat should go on the record right now
in support of the deal, and pledge to defend it from attacks in
Congress.”
“Republicans will try to sabotage the deal and take us to war, but
they can’t do it without Democratic votes,” Malitz wrote. “Progressives
will hold accountable those Democrats who vote to help Republicans
sabotage the deal and start a war.”

The Free Beacon cited a source who observed that this kind of political threat was consistent with the administration’s mindset.

“This is exactly what you’d expect from the
deal-at-any-cost lobby,” the source said. “The White House lied to
Congress about what it would deliver and doesn’t have anything left than
its raw political power.”

The Free Beacon report comes just after Bloomberg reported that an effort to promote a nuclear deal with Iran has been funded with millions since 2003.

Advocating for an Iran truce is a loose coalition of
peace groups, think tanks, and former high-ranking U.S. diplomats bound
together by millions of dollars given by the Rockefeller family through
its $870 million Rockefeller Brothers Fund. The philanthropy, which is
run by a board split between family members and outsiders, has spent
$4.3 million since 2003 promoting a nuclear pact with Iran, chiefly
through the New York-based Iran Project, a nonprofit led by former U.S.
diplomats. For more than a decade they’ve conducted a dialogue with
well-placed Iranians, including Mohammad Javad Zarif, now Tehran’s chief
nuclear negotiator. The Americans routinely briefed officials in the
George W. Bush and Obama administrations, including William Burns,
Obama’s former deputy secretary of state. Burns hammered out much of an
interim nuclear agreement in secret 2013 talks with his Iranian
counterparts that paved the way for the current summit in Vienna, where
Secretary of State John Kerry leads the U.S. delegation.

The Rockefellers’ Iran foray began in late 2001, after the Sept. 11
attacks. Stephen Heintz, president of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund,
convened a board retreat at the Rockefellers’ Pocantico Center in
Westchester, just north of New York City, to consider new approaches to
the Islamic world at a time when the U.S. was focused on the threat from
al-Qaeda. One invited speaker was Seyyed Hossein Nasr, an
Iranian-American professor of comparative religion then at Georgetown
University. “He got me thinking more and more about Iran, its
geostrategic importance and its relationship to the Sunni world,” says
Heintz.

What’s astonishing about these efforts is that when it was reported
that AIPAC would be fighting the administration’s efforts to appease
Iran, a high-ranking official of the National Iranian-American Council
(NIAC) responded,
“Our community needs to be better equipped to win the high stakes
battle underway that will decide between war and peace between the US
and Iran, and to do so against well-funded political interests who are
investing millions in killing an Iran deal. As the saying goes, you
don’t bring a knife to a gun fight.” (NIAC was found to have violated lobbying rules and was later ordered to pay $183,000 to cover the legal costs of a man it had defamed.)

Nor has the president been immune from suggesting that somehow he’s
fighting the influence of big money. In January when he (unsuccessfully)
attempted to dissuade Democratic senators from supporting any sort of
oversight legislation, he said
that “he understood the pressures that senators face from donors and
others, but he urged the lawmakers to take the long view rather than
make a move for short-term political gain, according to the senator.” It
was a crude attempt to smear anyone who disagreed with him (and likely
aimed at Sen. Robert Menendez (D – N.J.)), who rightly took offense.

The disingenuous attempt of a leading advocate for the anti-American
regime in Tehran to portray himself as an underdog is laughable,
especially when the president of the United States is on his side.
What’s remarkable is that there are no compunctions among the MSM to
suggest that Israel has too much influence in the formation of American
policy, but there next to no scrutiny of those who promote rapprochement
with a terror supporting, Mideast destabilizing, repressive, theocracy.
Whether or not there’s a deal this week we will continue to see the administration and its allies playing hardball and trying to marginalize anyone who dares question its wisdom.